[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There are some real omens for a long and hard winter, or as someone at the Farmer’s Almanac said, “A whole bunch of adjectives, followed by the word ‘cold’.”

[greeneyes]

Oh yeh, that reminds me, I bought the Farmers Almanac at the store the other day - haven’t gotten around to looking at it yet.

[Vigilanteman]

We had our first hard frost here in SW Pennsylvania just this morning. But my Better Boy variety tomatoes had shriveled up and quite producing more than one month ago. A family friend was still getting production from his Early Girl variety until just last night.

Generally, I have a bucket or more of green tomatoes to pick before the first frost. I wrap them in newspaper and let them ripen off the vine. I'm still pulling ripened tomatoes out of the bucket until mid-November, sometimes even longer. But not this year.

I've read that there's another variety of the noxious stink bug which is supposed to be moving here by next summer. Maybe a hard winter is just what we need to slow the invasion.